Anteros
by auntarctica
Summary: This demon knows nothing of our past, or how I live and die from moment to moment by the way it arranges its face. But it likes my brother's name. (Vergil/Dante, Nelo Angelo, set during DMC 1)
1. Chapter 1

Someone in a book my brother used to own once said, "Man is a god in ruins". Or wrote it, I guess; whatever. That book is mine now. Or at least, I have it. Only time will tell if I really own it. I wake up every day hoping I don't.

Once, my brother's quest was wisdom.

There's a cello in the closet, worth a fortune, wrapped in linen like a shroud. I keep it locked away—out of sight, out of mind. It hasn't felt the sun on those gleaming curves in a decade, nor the talented hands that once fingered and stroked it, drawing forth long, low moans in the form of glorious music. Once, my brother's quest was beauty.

I didn't appreciate it, any of it; not the way I should have at the time. I had my own little fucked-up mission, which found itself at odds with his more often than not. My quest was my brother, and everything else was just an obstacle to me. Even now, that's never really changed.

I keep his things around me, inert but loaded, unobtrusive, here and there, while I wait out my life, deafening my thoughts with heavy metal, slashing through the unending calendar days in a haze of blood and liquor.

When a woman who looks like our dead mother shows up out of the black on a sweltering night and trashes the place, I let her. Sure, lady. Electrocute me, impale me, kick me in the face. Knock yourself out. Dent my jukebox, break a table—I don't give a shit. Throw a motorcycle at me. Whatever. I'm sure you're also working through some issues, or you wouldn't be dressed like that. Take it from a guy who used to run around without a shirt.

My things mean nothing to me. His things—that's another story.

Some of her antics are cutting it a little bit close, threatening the safety of some priceless personal artifacts. And that's where I start to get edgy. I draw my guns, shoot the bike and put her down—literally, on the floor. My office is on fire now; I have no idea why.

From there, she finally makes with her agenda. Gives me some tin-eared, awkward dialogue, like she was born yesterday and doesn't quite get how human conversations work. Not that I'm surprised, at this point. Her opening salvo was, 'you must be the handyman who'll take any dirty job', which sounds like the line you say to the plumber in a porno. Lucky for her, I'm used to awkward weirdos. I meet a lot of 'em in my line of work.

She clearly thinks my brother died that night, along with my mom. Lost them to evil, she says. Yeah, that part's true enough. It's not the whole story, but I don't correct her. Nobody needs to know my business but me.

She's not wrong about Mundus, though. Because of what he did, I lost my brother. Lost him to zealotry, lost him to a driving, destructive, single-minded ambition. When she tells me where to find him, that's all I give a shit about. And when she finally reveals her face, it's just another detail to remind me of my loss and steel my resolve.

So here I am, taking in the sights and taking out sin scythes on beautiful Mallet Island. And it actually is beautiful, if you're into that kind of thing; a fortress by the sea, like something you'd see on a travel brochure. I'm sure it'd be a nice place to vacation—if you can find it when the time comes. Not that I'll ever know. Devil hunters don't get days off. It's not like I can just ask someone to cover my shift.

Maybe when the Demon King is dead, I can think about it.

On the other hand, maybe I don't want to think so much. Maybe I don't want that much time to think. Maybe it's better to keep moving forward, forever, hitting things so they don't hit me.

I'm aware I'm thinking too much even now, so when I round a staircase and find one of those shitshow Pinocchios, I'm glad to see it—a lone marionette, whiling away its spare time, mindlessly spinning its scythe-arms.

"Looks like you're one unlucky puppet," I tell it, blindsiding it squarely in the trunk. It falls back limply. A second strike of Alastor and it's gone, shattered to the four corners of the room in a rain of tottering wood and arterial bloodspray.

Once that's done, there's not much else to recommend this little stone landing—nothing, that is, but the big old double doors in the middle. They're ornate, like everything else in this place, with some guy's head carved in profile. He looks familiar. Some long-dead Greek or Roman from the library of my youth; I swear I saw him on the cover of a dusty tome or two, but damned if I can name him. Not that it matters.

I figure I might as well check it out before I move on. After all, you never know. There might be something worthwhile in there, something to help me beat Mundus. Or something hideous and abysmal. I'm really okay with either.

I shove the doors open without ceremony and saunter through, glancing to my right out of habit. The first thing I see is a statue; the bust of some sad babe with a convenient hole in her chest. It just so happens I have something that might fit the bill.

_Step right up, put the sword in the little lady and win a prize._

"Tell him what he's won," I mutter, as I give her the Death Sentence, though I'm not sure what she did to deserve it. She opens her mouth and drops something round, sort of a demonic hockey puck. It doesn't look like much now, but given demon logic and how things work around here, I'm sure it'll be useful at some point. I bend down to pick it up, flip it like a quarter, and stick it in my pocket.

And that's probably all she wrote for this room—the goodies are always spread out, like an Easter egg hunt—but it can't hurt to check. It's when I turn, unassuming and ready to give it the once-over, that I get a punch to the gut.

I'm startled, though I don't betray it to the opulent walls and giant, gilded mirror; to the huge, dark, canopied bed with its heavy drapes, lashed back to the posts with silken ropes. I really should have recognized the walls, richly paneled in mahogany, with their intricate neoclassical designs—the goddamn cherub, at the very least, that still bears a scar from being skewered by Rebellion.

It's a room I know all too well, and a bed I know better still. A room that holds heavy memories for me, even if it's a bullshit replica made out of popsicle sticks and demon spit. Against my best intentions, it makes me remember—late nights and moonlight; my body alive in that bed, whether riding high or arching beneath, silk on my back and held down willingly.

It can never be just a room, of course—never just an unsettling set-piece, an inert tableau to spook you, muahaha, like a carnival house of horrors. Nah, that'd be too easy.

I feel a strange shimmer of awareness in my blood, an effervescence, and I know a demon is near. Nothing quite like dowsing for devils, when your body's the divining rod. I back up slowly, scanning the room, but no black circle yawns open in the Persian rug; no ragged shadow emerges from the corner to reveal its true nature. Sparks rush through me in unison, sudden and decisive, lighting up my entire back in a pleasurable shiver.

It's behind me.

The response is visceral, strong enough to surprise me. I don't usually go off like this for just any minor entity. The sensation consumes me, and I'm savoring it so much that when I turn around, I don't notice it at first.

It clicks in after a second—that my reflection in the giant glass expanse has a mind of its own, and no allegiance to me, or my movements. It stares at me, baleful and pale-eyed. Only when it steps forward and raises its chin do I see the glint of dark humor in its gaze.

As he steps free of the mirror, I have a moment to admire myself in effigy. Not bad.

This devil has a smooth, straight-backed stride, a supple kinetic ease. For a moment he exaggerates this to a cocky swagger, and it feels like he's mocking my body mechanics. Then he is back to strolling forward, unhurried and fluid.

"You're my twin, huh?" I say, as he backs me toward the bed.

My words give him no pause. He approaches unfazed, with a faint smirk.

"He wouldn't like you," I say. "That's really not his preferred look. He was always pretty explicit about that."

It had started young, his wish to hold himself apart, to be something other than me. It happens a lot with twins, I guess—wanting to carve your own identity, if you can't re-carve your face—but he really elevated it to an art form. Sometimes it actually hurt, how little of me he wanted to see in himself.

"Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about you biting my style, either."

The devil saunters closer, sinuous, something like curiosity in its eyes, if I wasn't giving it too much credit.

"You gotta admit, this is embarrassing. One of us should change, right? I'd do it, but I only brought the one outfit, and this is your room, right? Vergil? That's who you're supposed to be, isn't it?"

It's hard enough to say that name at the best of times, much less off the cuff, to a flawless simulacrum of his face. But if there's one weapon I've honed more sharply than any other, it's casual deflection. My voice doesn't hitch, even if my heart does.

"All this fan art of my family. I'm flattered. Mundus just can't help himself, can he? Between you and me, I'm starting to think he's a little obsessed. You know, in a creepy kind of way." I study the sleek, wordless doppelgänger, who tilts his head to study me in turn, his hair spilling against his collar. He's wearing a faint smile, like I amuse him. "You're good work, though. I have to hand it to him." I feel a sudden tautness in my throat. "You really look like my brother."

Especially the eyes. Like there are green and living things there, trapped under the ice.

I spread my arms. "Well, say something. I feel like I'm monopolizing this conversation."

The demon laughs silently. I wonder if it actually gets the joke, or if it's just some primal, vestigial compulsion. Feathers on a lizard.

"What, all this attention to detail, and no soundtrack? I won't hear any smug insults or classical aphorisms? I want my money back. On second thought, why am I complaining?"

I'm lying. I'd like nothing more than to hear my brother's sullen, sultry tones caress some dumb, dead Latin. My brother's voice is something you never forget. And I'm glad this hellspawn doesn't have it, because it's always been my weakness.

As I look at the simulated twin before me now, it's clear that there's plenty about Vergil that was unforgettable. I haven't forgotten, but being reminded this viscerally is something else. Something that stabs me and stirs me in equal measures.

The silence starts to feel like the wrong kind of tension, and that's not good. I break it yet again, compelled to fill the space between us with something—anything but the inevitable potential. "No voice, huh? You're no better than all those marionettes, then. Just a prettier class of action figure."

His pale brow knits. He frowns; shakes his head ever so slightly to the negative. So he does hear me.

He's almost perfect. It wouldn't take much.

_Fuck it_, I think, and even the voice in my head is breathless.

The demon is close enough to touch, now, and I do, with both hands. I push his hair away from his face, thread my fingers back from his brow and now my breath hitches; my heart seizes roughly at the outcome, just like I hoped it would. He is my reflection, after all, so it shouldn't surprise me that he looks just like Vergil.

What surprises me is that he looks more like Vergil than I do.

"Est animus tibi, sunt mores et lingua, fidesque." The words come uninvited to the threshold of my lips and I let them cross. If this pitch-perfect imposter can't ad-lib my brother's kind of lines, I'll invoke them myself. _You have a man's soul, good manners and powers of speech, and fidelity. _

They're the words I'd have said to Vergil, if I'd ever gotten a second chance. He'd have liked them. I've carried them in my pocket for a while.

Of course, the demon hasn't spoken; not a single word. But something about him spills eloquence and honor all the same. It's in his gestures, and his bearing—or something else I can't place. Maybe the mere act of his wearing Vergil's visage evokes these associations in me. Maybe I'm seeing what I want to see; projecting years of hollow longing onto this mute mannequin.

The demon smiles. It's my brother's smile he's wearing, and it knocks my heart; breaks it like a billiard set and scatters it to the four corners. He moves closer to me still. It's almost indecent, now. Much closer and it'll be a swordfight—and not the kind we're supposed to be having

"Well now. That's pretty cozy for a couple of fellows."

I doubt he can feel the thwarted enormity of the displaced love that's grown black and cancerous in my brother's absence, or the crushing weight of my ugly, unwieldy grief, but I know he can sense my primal arousal at seeing this likeness again. Demons are carnal creatures in general, driven by infernal id, and this one is no exception. His cold, loveless eyes seek my body and linger, insinuating, then drag back up to meet my gaze. He's there to fight me, make no mistake, but he's not averse to fucking me first.

Lucky for him, I'm not averse to it either. "Guess Mundus has my number, huh?"

The irony is, I doubt he even knows how hard he bullsed the eye. I know what he was thinking: 'Show the guy his long-lost brother—that'll fuck with him.' That wasn't exactly the way this was going, but at least he got most of the words right.

Somehow I keep my voice cavalier. "Those clothes don't suit you, bro."

The demon looks down at himself, then back at me. A moment later he seems to come to a conclusion, and makes a reasonable decision: he starts to take them off. A practical guy. I can respect that.

"Let me help you." I'm brazen now, and a little too eager, as I slide my hands under his coat at the shoulders. The first touch takes me aback. His deltoids are my brother's, absolutely; intricately honed from his swordsmanship. I'd know them anywhere. I can feel their definition; each head of muscle, the taut power in their shapely domes. I'm unsettled, and reluctantly impressed, by the attention to detail.

For my own twisted little reasons, I wish Mundus been more thorough in his art and less in love with his mirror gimmick—that this devil had come in Vergil's clothes, not mine—but gods are far more prosaic than you'd think, fond of old clichés and obvious metaphors and ham-fisted omens. They all steal from each other, and they've been recycling the same shit for years. For divine beings, they're not exactly loaded with divine inspiration.

But as soon as I push the red coat off his shoulders, perception shifts, somehow. As it falls down, exposing his well-sculpted arms, the primary illusion of me falls away with it.

He notes the coat as it collapses in a heap at his feet, assessing it like a curio. I reach for the fastenings of his vest, next—and for the first time, he touches me. I feel his hand seize mine, stilling it, as he peers at me inscrutably.

For a moment I wonder if I read this all wrong. If my long-suffering subconscious was only seeing what it wanted to see—willing desire in those reptile eyes, even if there's no soul. But no, I had it right the first time.

The demon seems to remember he's a demon, suddenly, and does his transmogrification trick; the clothes disappear, and now he stands before me, naked and unselfconscious, gaze trained on mine.

I feel my breath catch at the sight of him. Sleek and lithe, but never slight. You could be forgiven for thinking he's lean, from the way he moves, or the way he looks in his fancy clothes, but my brother is strong, above all—solid and muscled beneath his finery.

Unwrapped, he's a masterpiece. I know those sculpted arms and shoulders like my own. I've caressed that well-cut chest, traced the taut and intricate topography of that torso. He's flawless, down to the smallest details, and one in particular that leaves me a little shaken when my eyes delve south to the carved ledges of his loins, and I catch sight of it.

My brother has something I don't.

_I have a lot of things you don't, Dante,_ I can hear him say in his surly purr, the dry and disparaging words forming in my forebrain at once, as delicately as if they'd been tipped there by Yamato, sliced up and served on her edge. _Shall I number them?_

But my internal Vergil is being sardonic and figurative, whereas I'm being literal—my brother has a physical feature that I lack: namely, a beauty mark. It's maybe the only true difference between us, apart from our fashion sense—the only mark on his entire body, as far as I know, and believe me, no one's surveyed that pristine landscape more devotedly than me. I'm the fucking Ponce de Leon of terra Vergilius.

This demon has it too—merely a dot, a single sable-colored circle above his left iliac furrow, no bigger than a drop of blood. Inwardly, I shudder.

I'd kissed that little mark a hundred times, loving it for its subversive presence, the way it elevated his angelic symmetry by virtue of corrupting it. I got the feeling he'd always disliked it, thought of it as a blight in his classical perfection—a flaw in otherwise unsullied marble; a shameful brand of his birth, betraying his humanity. But he was wrong about that. It's the devil that's in the details, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I stare at my brother's double, rapt with his accuracy, down to the goddamn dot. In the back of my head it nags me—how could Mundus know? Is he pillaging my mind? Pulling all of this from the sacred rubble in the dead city of my memories? My melancholy whiskey-aided late-night fantasies?

I don't even know if he's alive. Vergil.

He has no reason not to be. The fall alone would never kill him, and my brother could survive the demon world just fine. I can picture him strolling through it, bored, leisurely and deadly, dispatching all comers with elegant savoir faire and casual brutality. I picture it a lot, because I hope to hell it's true.

It's all I have—his books, his globe, a slashed glove, and that hope.

This demon is not my brother. He's the sibling of Legion, of a multitude of demons, no doubt—all forged under the loveless hands of Mundus. This one just happens to be forged in my likeness. But once he's out of the costume, I don't see my reflection anymore. What I see is only Vergil, standing before me. A world unto himself, as ever.

I can't think of a single reason why I shouldn't have this. It's not like I have anything else, since he left. It's not like I ask for anything. I just kill, and exist.

"I've missed your face," I say, on a swallowed breath. Somehow, knowing he's not Vergil, I can say things I could never say to Vergil. "God, I've missed your face."

At those words, the demon reaches out to touch mine, tracing its fingers down my jaw, and I shudder, closing my eyes. For all the world it feels like my brother's touch. There's riot in my blood I try to ignore, because I know it can't be real.

I open them a moment later, as I feel that same touch reappear lower, finessing the fastenings of my vest with dexterous expertise, so deft the buckles barely stir as they fall open. It may not have Vergil's scorched-velvet voice, but it has his shot-silk grace and sensuous way with objects. Watching my brother interact with the world around him was always one of my favorite clandestine pastimes.

I'd never intended to strip for this. I'd only planned to unzip. To push this well-wrought devil facedown over the bed, shove up inside that glorious borrowed ass and grip those hips, getting my fix by staring down at that familiar back, so I wouldn't have to stare into those foreign eyes. I'd figured on a quick, cathartic fuck, the mindless kind that burns bright and hot until it hits bare earth, and then blots out, leaving you sated but hollow.

We'd fight; he'd die. And then, adios, I'd be on my way.

But he—it—wants to see me, for some reason. That strangely human curiosity is back in its light, inhuman gaze. Or maybe it never left.

It peels off my coat and vest, then slides the black jersey slowly up my torso, rapt, watching what it reveals. It's my brother's hands undressing me, and I can't bring myself to stop it. My stomach trembles under his touch. After a beat, I can't even hold back anymore—I reach over my shoulder and grasp the shirt at my nape, hauling it over my head and tossing it aside. My amulet goes with it.

The devil looks down, touches its own chest, then looks at mine.

"Like what you see?" I sit down on the bed for a moment, yanking off my tall boots with practiced technique, gripping the heel and bending back the last so they release. _Stylish, but impractical,_ my inner Vergil drawls. _Hardly conducive to fucking your brother in effigy_.

The effigy doesn't seem to mind. He watches me intently, a vision of everything I've missed and all I've ever wanted. I stand, and jerk open the buttons of my pants, slowly easing them past my hips, over the hard rise of my cock and down my thighs. "How 'bout now?"

I step free of them, leaving them pooled where they fell like so much erotic detritus, just another casualty of my single-minded sex drive, the part of me that only stirs for Vergil. I move toward his graven image, the Persian carpet thick beneath my feet, my body now fully exposed in the tapestried silence.

It's been ten years since Vergil raised the demon tower. Ten years since it crumbled and fell, and he let himself go with it. I'm no longer eighteen, and if he's alive, then neither is he. I've stared at myself in the mirror every day since, pushing my hair back, trying to see him as he must look now—as a man. I'd raise my chin, narrow my eyes, sober my expression, and pull off a decent impression. But the image was always fleeting. Somehow I could never quite fully see myself as him, and away from the mirror, all my mental pictures of him remained the ones from Temen-ni-gru and before.

Now I know beyond a doubt—if he's alive, somewhere, he looks like this. Like me, but even more like this creature.

My eyes are drawn down, now, and I let them go. Down his lean, tapering midriff to the sensual chevron of the Adonis belt, leading into the strong, flared columns of his thighs and the heavy weapon that hangs between them, a piece of art if I've ever seen one. Half-hard, it's arched, and graceful somehow, shrouded in its foreskin, lounging there indolently against the tautness of his balls. My fingers ache to grab it and reveal its glory. Not the twin of mine just yet, but it will be.

He's such a master work, for a moment I'm reminded of the statues. _Step right up, pull the lever and see what you get._

But this sculpture is no fixed automaton, trapped on a pedestal. It's alive, and it steps up to me first, bringing us back where we began—cozier than sworn enemies have any right to be. This close, I try once more to see the nameless devil beneath. I scry for the marks of forgery. I search for a fault and find nothing. It's Vergil I'm face to face with, now. That sullen, sensual mouth with its intrinsic pout, and the high, angled cheekbones that subtly point down to it. The striking intelligence behind those cynical eyes, and the peaked brows that crown them.

And when it tips my jaw up on the side of its fingers, it's Vergil's habitual gesture that knocks me over with a feather. When it regards me closely, it's Vergil's studious scrutiny I see.

"What are you waiting for?" My voice is rough, suddenly. "Brother."


	2. Chapter 2

In response, he wraps his arms around me; draws us close and brings us flush—chest to chest and thigh to thigh. I'm taken aback. Vergil's scent surrounds me at once, every note and undertone; musk and leather and night on earth. I breathe out before I realize I've done it, as my arms steal up with a will of their own, find their way around him, and slowly tighten. "Oh God," I utter, on the underside of my breath. I'm overcome, for a moment, by how good it feels—to be in my brother's embrace, to hold him again. To feel the full expanse of his naked skin against my own. It's him, every inch him; I don't even have to pretend.

His loins are warm against mine; I can feel his cock swell against the hollow of my hip as it quietly stirs from slumber. And it really hits me: I can touch his body again. I can feel his touch again. Not even a pale imitation, but a perfect reproduction.

I pull back, urgently, just far enough to stare into his eyes. It's always been like gazing into infinity, the way they reflect my own back to me. It's not unlike that now, but somehow the mirror is cloudy. Maybe that's where it ends; maybe that's the extent of Mundus' artifice, the limits of whatever dark alchemy made this counterfeit being. It's close enough, though. I'd never doubt him if I didn't know better.

This is where he would speak. He'd make with something quietly incendiary; some insinuating Latin, some sharp and goading quip, or else some unthinkable intimacy—tender enough to stagger me, eloquent enough to make my heart fall, ripe, into his hand. Ol' Verge is a real romantic when he wants to be, when it moves him to do it. But none of that's forthcoming here.

I kiss him, all at once, before his silence undermines the illusion. That way I can pretend he was on the cusp of words, before my lustful impulses overtook me. It's believable; I've always been impatient. My brother would be the first to agree.

Fuck knows it's not what I intended to do, but I don't end up regretting it, either. Just like the real thing, that satin mouth loses its sultry moue the moment mine touches it, falling into decadence, full and responsive. His hand winds into my hair as he seems to come alive; into the gesture, against my lips and beyond, as they part beneath his, and his tongue eases in alongside mine, obscenely caressing—mute, but not ineloquent. This is a language it speaks. He doesn't taste like flint and brimstone. He tastes like just I hoped he would.

He's everything I hoped he'd be.

And I'm going to fuck my brother by proxy and in absentia, right here in this flawless cage that mimics the natural habitat of our sordid past. There's not a force on earth that could stop me. Not even Mundus himself.

_Stick a sword in the handsome gentleman and win a prize. _

I blindly reach between us and grab his cock, bringing it up against mine, gripping them in one hand. Jerking us together, slow and hard, without preamble, shuddering into his lips. I savor its solidity, feeling its sensual contours; the soft velvet heft of it, the give and slide of it; feeling his flesh resurrect beneath my hand, and against my own.

I look down when he lets me, at the living, pulsing artifact in my grasp, long-lost and longed for, fully unfurled and flush with demon blood. Now it's the counterpart and complement of mine, the corresponding bookend, the matched chess pair. "That's more like it," I murmur, the words sanded thin, worn threadbare by my lust-seized throat. "Missed me, didn't you. It's okay to admit it."

He eyes me for a white-hot, glancing moment with that cold, searing gaze, then chases my mouth like escaped prey, recapturing it with his own. His kiss is heart-stopping; voracious and refined, like all my brother's aptitudes and appetites—steeped in the inexplicable splendor of late nights and long library afternoons, of bracing air and storied cobblestone and singing steel. It evokes him in more than just body, more than just form. His lips spell unspoken words against mine, his tongue spills them past my own. I swallow them, and come for more. I swallow them and see, as they bloom up into my senses. My mind's eye knows the shape of my brother's soul.

I'm struck by a memory of Vergil and I, side by side, blood-spattered and battle-spent, standing on the pale beach grasses of the strand and gazing out at the restless sea beside our father's house, through a veil of rain so fine it was almost mist. I remember it, soft on my face as I stood beside him, hanging on one hip, sword on my shoulder, the taste of blood seeping slowly over my lower lip. I remember bone-deep contentment, and the endless ocean.

After a moment, I slung my arm around him. After a much longer moment, he reached up and grasped my hand.

I could have died happy, right then and there, at seventeen. I was over the moon, but didn't dare to show it. He was silent, and so was I—a dog that knows it's not allowed on the furniture, but had yet to be scolded for it. To be fair, Vergil was more apt to hit me with the Yamato than a rolled-up newspaper—but he did nothing. Just lingered there, close and companionable, salt air stirring the pale hair at his brow; a vision in profile, oblivious to my bliss.

When this demon takes my forearm now, it feels the same. His fingers slide down over mine, intimating, as he draws me toward the bed. Something must be very wrong, for it to feel so right. Overcome, I break the kiss, break his grasp and push him down onto it, breathless. "Hold up, brother devil. Slow your roll."

The demon falls back on his elbows, sprawled with all my brother's grace, gazing up at me with all his cool amusement, taking my measure. After weighing me with his eyes, he beckons.

_Step right up._

My head can't compete with my heart—it never fucking could. I'm over him in a single beat, the motion predatory and sudden. His well-carved arms seize me, enfold me, strong hands moving over my naked back and down my bare ass in a slow, forceful caress. I close my eyes and revel in it, groaning, letting my head fall forward. I'm braced on my hands, his breath sparring with mine in the stillness, our bodies indecently aligned.

"Vergil." It's penciled in the air, the bare flutter of a word; breath given the basest illusion of shape. I won't call it a whisper, even if it was.

The devil searches my gaze, sphinxlike in his silence. He touches my lips, and I turn my face clumsily into the touch, mindlessly kissing his wrist, his palm; taking his perfect fingers into my mouth like a sacrament, pressing my brow against his hand, yearning in my need to physically confess the depths of my lonely devotion, this solitary inner vigil I've kept—even to a false idol.

I've carried this torch for ten years, and I'll carry it for ten more if I have to.

"This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it hurts you."

I'm atop him, and it's where I mean to stay. But as I look down at my brother's immaculate face, and feel his flawless body, warm and breathing beneath me, I realize my priorities have changed.

_Stick a sword in the handsome gentleman. Or maybe you'd rather he stick a sword in you?_

I climb astride him, spreading my thighs instead of his. He watches; pale eyes piercing and lips slightly parted as I straddle him and spit in my hand, reaching back to grasp his cock. "Feels like old times," I mutter, as I angle it up, nocking it like an arrow, aligning its ultimate trajectory. I work it around a little, rubbing the soft head over the sensitive skin, groaning at the sensation, and the solid threat behind it. The size is ominous, but it's a familiar apprehension. "You always did like raising monuments to impress me."

I've been slashed and stabbed so many times, I hardly bat an eye when it happens. I don't even break a sweat when I take a sword to the chest, or a scythe to the torso. You'd think I'd be more nonchalant about impaling myself on my brother's cock, but it's been far too long since Temen-ni-gru and my body and soul are trembling at the prospect.

_So much for your demon-fucking principles._ First I wanted him face up, and now I want him inside me.

So sue me.

I slam myself down all at once, because that's how we do things in our family: without mercy. The head blasts past my body's resistance, breaches the gate like a battering ram, and that's how you make an entrance. I laugh, and cry out a little, grasping his thigh, using my weight to sink him deeper. My flesh spreads for his, as always. My body holds this memory, and it's a fond one. I throw back my head with a long, low groan as the shaft slides up inside me, stretching me, filling me with an intensity that hijacks my mind. I settle the last of my weight on him with a final, violent jut, and he's sheathed in me completely, hilt-deep.

_I just sat upon nine inches of my very elegant brother._ Not exactly mnemonic, but enjoyable nonetheless.

I need a moment, after that, and thankfully, inexplicably, he gives it to me. I don't know why I'm surprised. All evidence so far points to him being, at the very least, an honorable fraud. "Pretty considerate, for hell-spawn," I tell it, breathless and irreverent. "You sure you're not my brother?"

His eyes narrow as his hands slide slowly up my thighs and come to rest on my hips. My eyes fall on its face again—his face—and I'm fixated there, rapt with its architecture, mired in that arctic gaze.

_Are __**you**__?_

I feel a shudder go through me. I surge into life, physically blotting out the thought even as I entertain it. Pleasure shoots through my core like voltage as I rock forward. That subtle curve to his works hits me where I live—it never fails. I run my hands up his chest as I ride him, palms furiously adoring every knot and ripple of muscle, as I stare at that face and let it feed my arousal.

I thought it would be harder—pretending.

I fall into a hard, deliberate rhythm, rolling my loins and relishing the ache; not too slow and not too fast. Just right. He watches me with sullen lips and blazing eyes, gripping my hips with a demon's strength, but a lover's ardor, and a gentleman's reverence. There hasn't been a false note yet.

"You must be pretty happy in hell. Never even tried to come back. Not once. Never even sent a fucking postcard." I bite back a moan, straining it through my teeth. "And it doesn't even matter. Because I'd take you back anyway. Maybe you know that."

He watches my lips as his hands wander upward, running up my arms and over my chest, feeling the muscles there. I flex, like always, just to make sure he gets the best experience. His touch is firm and curious. His gaze is bright and ravenous, fixed on me like I'm the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.

"Maybe I should just go there." I gasp and hitch at a sudden twinge of pleasure. "Find your ass and drag you home." The words are full of passion and venom; half-erotic, half-cathartic.

It's a weird kind of dirty talk, but it's working for me.

"God damn you," I breathe, pitching forward. It's followed by a groan. "God damn you, Vergil."

It reacts to the name.

Touches my lips and makes a slight beckoning with its fingers, as if trying to pull forth words. A beat later, it dawns on me what it wants. I hesitate. "You want me to call you that?"

It nods once, almost too slight to see.

This demon knows nothing of our past, or how I live and die from moment to moment by the way it arranges its face. But it likes my brother's name.

Maybe it's been told who it's supposed to be, and I'm merely affirming its purpose. Maybe it just wants to hear me say it; gets a sick thrill out of exploiting my grief and desperation. But if I'm honest, this demon doesn't seem sadistic. If anything, it seems intrigued. Maybe even pleased.

Another thought occurs to me, along with a sudden twinge of all-too-human compassion. Maybe it really believes it's Vergil. Maybe that's how it was made, and it doesn't know any different. We're brothers, as far as it knows, and I'm only calling it by its name.

Everyone likes to hear their name, especially on a loved one's lips. It's only human. Right now, I would kill to hear Vergil say mine. But this devil has my brother's tongue in only the most literal way.

This devil wants me to call it Vergil.

It's what I want too.

I lean forward all at once, seizing his face in my hands, feeling the unyielding shift of his cock high and hard inside me, hitting me at a tight new angle, pushing a gasp from my lips. Thumbs resting on his cheekbones, I stare straight into his waiting eyes, as I utter my brother's name—once softly, then again, with growing urgency.

His eyes close and his lips break apart, head falling back like the word is a touch; his body roils and undulates, like he's luxuriating in the sound, like an earthquake is taking place inside him. A moment later he surges beneath me and throws me over, reversing our positions. I know I should resist, insist on keeping the upper hand, but I don't want to, and that's the fucking truth. I find myself on my back and roll with it, responsive, shifting beneath him, opening myself to him.

I curse, I groan as he finds his way back inside me, his length sliding home like the long, hot bolt of a good solid lock, and now he's over me, his weight a familiar and welcome burden, his bulk spreading my inner thighs out and back, the taut flat of his loins pressed flush against my ass. But it's the little details that undo me, the sensations I'd somehow mislaid or taken for granted; the faint brush of silver netherhair against my touch-hungry skin, the damp heat of our mingled sweat anointing the ultimate junction of our indecent union.

He starts to move at once, fucking me with sinuous grace and smooth, swift, hard strokes, like a striving Olympian with a single-minded vision. I bathe in the vision of him above me, lush-lipped and breathless, ice blue eyes glowing with lust, lit up like neon, never leaving my face. I grasp his ass in both hands, clutching him to me, desperate to pull him deeper, to feel him closer, to displace all the hollow years and solitary nights with the primal brunt of pure physical love.

"Like that. Just like that," I breathe, lips crushed against his jaw, as the surging cock inside me hits all the right angles, lighting me up like a pinball machine. "You know. You always knew."

This is nothing like staring at myself in the mirror late at night with my hair swept back, jerking off furiously while the blur of the whiskey obscures the true identity of the man before me. This is nothing like lying alone in my bed and trying to conjure the feeling of his touch, or wrapping my arms around myself so I can fall asleep pretending that they're his.

It's nothing like screwing some nameless guy who looks or acts like him in some vague way, or closing my eyes and pounding my cock to some bronzed, well-worn memory of our scandalous past that I keep on the mantel.

I don't even have to squint.

As for the past, I'm right back in it. Or maybe some alternate present, given that we're older. Some world where our house is not a ruin, and neither is my life. Some world where my brother never left, never fell—but stayed with me in our father's house, content to study his arcane and archaic bullshit and play his cello in the music room on sun-flooded afternoons. Content to fight me in the rain and fuck me in the shower. A world where he doesn't mind me listening, or lingering in his presence, or stretching out on the couch with my head in his lap while he reads. A world where his room has become our room.

That world is my heaven.

Here and now, it feels like reality. I'm not on Mallet Island. I'm home.

"You feel real." The words are hushed and raw. I reach out to touch his face, feeling the sweat at his temple, gazing up at him in dazed and wounded wonder.

He stills mid-motion and tilts his head; looks at me askance. It kills me, to see that dubious amusement, the well-known way it plays across those deeply beloved features, but I don't know what it means. I'm lost, without his tarnished silver tongue to hint at his sentiments, to demystify those enigmatic expressions with cryptic asides. Taken together, you can begin to know my brother's intentions.

As if he can feel my thoughts, he descends all at once, resuming his rhythm, all-consuming; silencing my thoughts with his mouth, soothing my restless body, merciless in his mercy.

Carnal perfume blooms thick between us with each clap of flesh, driven by heat and friction. It's everything I remember, the tangled, incestuous chemistry of my brother and I in rut—the smell of his sex rubbed and crushed and combining with mine, and I huff it like a drug, embracing the euphoria that shoots through me. The unbearable contentment, this wholeness I haven't felt in years.

_It's only right and natural_, he whispered to me once, in this very bed.

I clutch his back, and the back of his neck where the hairs are short and softly bristled, feeling the jump and pulse of his straining muscles, staring up unseeing at the canopy as he beats himself into the core of me, a relentless pestle grinding down the final ingredient in some dark love charm. My mouth falls open as he hits me where I'm weak, and he takes the invitation to thrust his tongue deeper.

I grab the back of his head in both hands, meeting his kiss feverishly, open-mouthed, moaning around his tongue as he penetrates me twice. I fuck him back, thighs tensed, bucking upward, stomach rippling and clenching as I ride his thrusts.

I'm pretty good at lying to other people, but I've never been any good at lying to myself. That's what the beer was for, when I was nineteen. It's what the beer and whiskey are for now; to muzzle all that brutal, inward-facing honesty. Take it down to a dull roar.

I can't deny the sweet, violent shudder in my blood, the siren surge of hectic resonance that calls something far more intimate than my brother's name, that cries out to his blood, his basest nature, his very being. This demon's blood answers mine. It's blunted; muffled and obscured like the depths of his eyes, like music from another room, but it's there, nonetheless.

_This is your brother._

And in that moment, I let him be.

It barrels down on me, as our bodies grind and align and collide, like thunder rolling down a cavernous hallway, growing louder as it nears. There's a beat before it hits me, and then I'm done for.

Tension breaks, all at once, gives way to rough and guttural juddering, as I succumb to the forbidden pattern my brother has drilled into my bones; licked into my skin over long nights of lovemaking, locked in his room, our mother none the wiser.

I wrap my arms around him and clutch him to me as I come, gripping him inside and out, wracked by a riot of convulsions, a frenzied full-body clenching. Pleasure explodes from a seed, somewhere deep, rolling outward like a shockwave, decimating the landscape.

I feel my cock's violent spasm in the press of our bodies, the wet heat bursting up between us. It's an embarrassment of riches, after so long, and I revel in the obscene opulence.

I groan, near-delirious, mouth trembling against his ear, voice shaking. "Come inside me, Verge. Come inside me. Come inside me." It's a mantra, a litany intoned on lust-drunk lips with the reverence of an invocation, and the craving of an incantation.

Shuddering, he throws back his head and obliges. His throat is silent; his body is anything but. It's a physical cry, a kinetic roar, the way his back arches, the way his features contort—Vergil's face is never more petulant or beautiful than at the height of his pleasure. He pumps into me hard one last time and goes taut, loins flexed, pinning me to the bed as he shoots his load.

I'm overcome at the thought of my brother filling me once more, marking my innermost temple with calligraffiti so deep it'll never be effaced. Reviving the existing inscription, faded by time and distance, the brand I've carried ever since the night he first put his mouth on mine and ruined me for anyone else. Or rather, ruined the illusion there could ever be anyone else.

If I'm honest, I always knew. I've always known and I've never doubted. Not even now.

He half-collapses over me, holding his weight—a gentleman—but I drag him down, into my arms. Warmth comes with him, flooding my senses. I hold him close, shuddering in the aftershocks, mindlessly kissing his neck and face like a holy idol, worshipping that plush mouth with my own until I'm breathless again; bringing his brow to rest against mine. I'd fully expected to exorcise this obsession and find myself empty in the aftermath, but what I feel is nothing more or less than rapture. Bliss whispers in my blood. A low, luxurious thrum runs throughout me in an endless circuit, from heart to loins to head and back again.

I moan as he eases out of me, his cock scarcely softened as it drags its weight from within, a slow pulse of rich liquid following in its wake, carving the curve of my ass in a single rivulet that reminds me of a tear.

"Don't be so hasty, baby," I murmur, low in my throat. "C'mere." He does; I shudder and watch his languorous shift, as he comes to rest against me, beside me, body inclined to mine.

I curl myself close, and we lie there in sensual torpor under the lavish shelter of the canopy, the dark, carved bedposts a comforting cage, their heavy velvet curtains keeping the world at bay. As always, it reminds me of a childhood hideaway; a blanket fort made with couch cushions—a world and a secret held between us.

We never did give up that brotherly sanctuary, even as we left childhood behind; as our dynamic shifted and intensified, as the true nature of our bond revealed itself and our games changed. As we came to consecrate our sibling vows in fluids other than blood. I always thought it stood to reason. Blood was always cheap to us. We spilled so much it had no meaning.

"This is how it was." I press my face against his hair, bury it in his neck, breathing in, submerging in his being. "Mom's room all the way at the other end of the house—a whole different wing. Might as well have been on Mars. Can't blame her. All she wanted was peace and quiet. Didn't want to hear my music. Didn't want to hear us fight and argue and carry on. But that worked out well for us, didn't it?"

The demon makes a sound for the first time—a dark, soft chuckle. I don't know if it's reminiscing on some shred of memory, with some stolen scrap of my brother's cognition, or if it merely likes being lulled with soft words in the primal aftermath.

I kiss his collarbone, and stroke his chest. It's warm and smooth, lightly slick in places where traces of my issue linger. I want to lay my cheek against it and fall asleep. This is what he's like when he's indulgent, my brother, in these unstudied moments after we welcome the tempest and wreck ourselves on the rocks of each other's shores. We end up past them, lying on the warm sand. It sates us in a way our battles can never approximate, no matter how long they rage.

"You know his name. Do you have his memories?"

The demon doesn't answer.

I slide my hand down his torso, touching the beauty mark with my index finger, closing my eyes. "That night in the courtyard, when you kissed me. The first time. 'You are not my enemy,' you said. 'You're my brother, and I'm yours.'"

"I'm yours," I repeat the words, feeling every meaning in them. "You remember that, right? Just tell me you do."

It's not a plea so much as a demand, and the devil who looks at me with my brother's gaze only hesitates for a fraction of a second before he nods.

_I wish I could believe you. _

All at once there's a prickling heat behind my eyes, a hitch in my throat, a shiver below my shoulder blades—but none of it will come to anything. I wouldn't cry in front of this phony even if I could. What can this life-sized action figure know about loss? He has no past, and if he's stupid enough to fight me, he won't have a future, either.

He studies the interplay of emotions across my face, seemingly bemused, a faint frown between his brows. I wonder what he sees. I realize that I must be even more of a mystery to him than he is to me—this demon-scented stranger who touches him like he's in love, who looks and acts like humans do—who does everything but cry.

"Can you speak?" I ask finally, once I get my shit together.

The demon nods, soberly, just once.

"But you won't."

It shakes its head, equally soberly. Just once.

I snort. "You take a vow of silence or something?"

It smiles my brother's smile. Not the sharp, taut, mocking one, or the amused, cool, contemptuous one, or the pleased, narrow-eyed, conquering one—but the rarest one in all of Vergildom: slight, wry, self-aware and wistful, with a cryptic and underlying sweetness.

On Temen-ni-gru, that smile alone could have brought me to my knees. If only he'd known.

"You're just like him. I could swear you are him." I close my eyes and breathe him in, filling my senses, memorizing his scent and presence, knowing it may be the last time I encounter them for a while. "You know how I know you're not? Vergil would never serve. Especially not a guy like that. 'Non serviam.' That was Vergil."

It takes all my considerable grit to utter my next words.

"You're not Vergil."

After a long moment, the demon nods. I don't know if he's agreeing or insisting. I'm not sure he knows either.

"I don't know if Mundus got ahold of some piece of him to make you, some splash of blood or shred of flesh—or if he took that piece from me. If his third eye can just see that fucking deep. And it doesn't matter. It's not your fault, and I don't need you to die for it."

_I don't want to kill you._

"You think your Demon King is something? This is just a room," I tell it, quietly. "My brother once resurrected our childhood home. A whole country manor. Even the sea next to it, and the moon above. Called it a labor of love." I laugh, but there's nothing funny in it. "Said it was for me. I never asked for any of it, and I didn't want it, but that's not the point, is it?" I stare into the middle distance. "It's the thought that counts, right?"

As much as I resent my brother, I've always been proud of him, too. His sheer ability, that natural aptitude that seemed to extend to everything. Vergil's talent was being talented. It's a conflicting set of feelings to hold, but I've been holding contradictory feelings about Vergil nearly all my life.

These days, I have a wistful, twisted nostalgia for the days when my brother used to erect and resurrect edifices on a whim—a long-dead home, a demon tower—all to draw me near. It's been eleven years since the first, ten years since the second. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like so long ago it never happened at all.

And I realize I'd give anything—anything—to have someone walk into my office and tell me he'd raised some other sky-scraping nightmare.

The demon looks at me, head tilted, a notch between his brows like he's listening carefully, studiously, to my softly bitter pillow talk. Figures I'd open up my chest to some hellspawn I'm about to send into oblivion, instead of all the so-called friends I chin-chuck and hold at arms' length.

I turn all at once, shove myself up and start hunting down my clothes—first dragging on my pants and boots, then snatching up my jersey from the far corner where it landed. My back is to him as I pull it on. At this point, I don't think twice about it—whatever else it might lack, this demon at the least has guts and honor. I separate my amulet and loop it around my neck, slipping it back down under my shirt where it lives, close to my heart, warmed by my skin. It feels unusually heavy to me, somehow, as it settles around my neck once again.

"I don't know why someone like you would serve someone like him, but I'm here to tell you that he's gonna die. He killed my mom." I take a deep breath, steeling myself as I turn around. The second part is harder, because it grazes the tender edges of my psyche, and the primal wound I hide. "He took my brother from me."

It's strange to say those words, when it seems like he's right in front of me.

"This is your chance to walk away, and you should take it." Even knowing he probably won't, I have to take a shot. "It'd be better for us both."

_You won't cease to exist, and I won't have to watch my brother die._

I find my vest and shoulder into it, strapping it on with far less finesse than this ersatz Vergil undid it. _How do you like that? Can't even compete with the cover band version of you, bro._

_Ha. Didn't stop you from enjoying the show._

The devil rises from the bed, long-legged and strong; poetry in motion. Standing there naked and light-eyed in the shadows of Vergil's room, he's a picture pulled straight from my memories. It pummels my heart. A picture will give you a cheap hit of feeling, but it's transient, static. Forever fixed in time and place. It doesn't move. It doesn't breathe. It doesn't pull you into its arms and let you lose yourself there for hours.

For a moment I entertain the thought of asking him to come with me. _Turn against Mundus_, I want to say. _Help me kill him._

I've already indulged this much insanity, so I don't deny myself one more crazy thought: I could take him back with me, this demon. Back to the human world. Back to Devil May Cry.

If he was willing to hunt devils, he'd be a good colleague, by day. I could keep him with me. Near me. Beside me. Just to remind me. And by night…

As ideas go, it's pretty warped, but that's never stopped me before. The only thing that gives me pause is how awkward it would be to explain if Vergil ever decided to stroll through the doors and back into my life. It's all too easy to imagine—him sweeping back in on a whim, only to find me shacked up with a sex doll wearing his shape. In my mind's eye, I can already see his expression; stricken and affronted, fascinated and appalled.

_What is this? A pet incubus? You think this mute, pathetic cipher can replace me? Really, Dante. I expected better of you._

He might not understand my reasons. And he might not forgive me.

He might leave again.

I stoop to gather my coat and slowly slide it on, ritually recreating myself. I'm almost respectable again. I reach over my shoulder to holster Alastor, the final piece now back in place.

"I'll say it once more." My voice is quiet, dark and firm, a veiled plea at its center. "Step aside, let me kill him, and you'll be free."

The demon expresses his regrets, reluctantly, shaking his head ever-so-slightly to the negative. He snaps his fingers, idly, and it all returns; my likeness, the clothing he'd shed. He stands facing me, in the guise of my reflection once more.

Like it never happened. But the ache in me says different. And it's not just in one place, either.

"So that's it, huh?" I huff out a bitter laugh. "It's time."

He spreads his hands like there's nothing he can do. And I suppose he can't. He's beholden, somehow—indentured to the Demon King, whether by creed, or curse, or compulsion. For a moment I'm so angry it startles me. My default act's been laid-back and sarcastic for so long, I almost don't recognize the emotion for what it is. It's heavier than I remember, and it strains my shoulders to hold.

I could really go for one last kiss before we do this, but it seems like that switch has flipped. His face is flat as he goes back to himself, the final transformation marked by a surging column of ultra-violet that suffuses him; the shift effortless and instantaneous. Now he stands before me in all his infernal glory, dark and horned, monstrous and massive, winged and wasp-waisted, armored like an archangel. Now his face is carved from stone, and he looks nothing like my brother—not even like his demon.

It's hard to see him disappear before my eyes once again. It's like watching him fall away until he's lost to my sight, swallowed by the swirling darkness. Part of me seethes with quiet anguish. Part of me is relieved.

It should be easier now.

I watch the incandescent purple power ebbing and pulsing in the strata of his armor he draws his blade and brandishes it with a flourish—a huge, clunky broadsword that crackles with lightning, all bludgeon and bombast. Not my brother's kind of weapon at all.

"This stinkin' hole was the last place I thought I'd find anyone with some guts." I throw away a gesture.

He snaps his fingers, and the French doors fly open.

In our father's house, the French doors in Vergil's room opened to a balcony, high above the courtyard that faced the sea. I remember pinning him in the doorway late at night after we'd made love; nuzzling his neck as the night breeze came idle off the ocean, soothing our demons and cooling our fevered skin.

Here, they open to a different balcony, above a different courtyard—but the same sea is waiting somewhere just beyond those battlements. Deep, constant, eternal. Immortal.

The demon beckons me outside with a single sharp gesture, then surges toward the doors, without waiting to see me acknowledge it. He knows; he trusts I'm right behind him.

_Steady, Dante. Don't get too cocky. Remember: you telegraph. Always have. Guard yourself. Don't rush in blindly._

Aren't you supportive all of a sudden.

_When you go to strike the final blow, don't hesitate. Even if he shows you my face._

I don't know how you can say that. Could you do it, if it were me? Wait, no. Don't answer that.

_Don't disappoint me, Dante. Don't let him defeat you._

Don't worry about that, bro. I have a score to settle.

_You're doing him a favor._

Who cares if I am? He's just some demon. A fake. A total stranger.

_Yes. Just one of Mundus' tricks. Don't be foolish, Dante._

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were worried about me.

The devil's armor clanks with menacing weight, like tectonic plates, his brute power apparent as he crosses the flagstone and moves over the threshold; from there, it's strange to see how lightly he vaults into the sky, and out of my immediate sight.

I know when I walk out I'll find him waiting, like a gargoyle, somewhere above. At least he's asking me to come with him, for once, instead of just walking away.

_And if you ever doubted that he isn't Vergil, that right there ought to fucking seal it._

I harden my heart, and follow him into the sunlight.


End file.
